Should countries abolish the two party political system ?

The reasoning for my argument is that with a two party system political system, is that politics has become a battle for power or to maintain that power, rather than its initial purpose which is to represent the people, act as a voice for the people and do what is best for the people
I get the fact that people have different ideology but in all honesty all ideas basically result in that group of people having maximum gain, minimum loss.
in the end i just think that government should stop focusing on the balance for power but rather focus on what is best for the people.

Oct 5 2012:
Barry, I cannot find any info on you and it really helps to know where a person is from, etc .. to better form a answer. I agree that a two party system is not ideal and on that note many Americans are becoming Independents. I am registered as one of the parties but I do my own research and vote for what I think is the lessor of the two evils. The real answer is to return to a Constitutional government where the power is with the states to self govern and the major focus of the fed would be the four areas the Constitution allows. The government cannot give you anyything without first taking it from you. We have allowed politics to become a profitable career instead of a service. In four years the US has went from a AAA credit rating to a aa- credit rating and is facing a 15 trillion dollar deficit and a fiscal cliff that will severely damage us at home and abroad. We have no foreign policy and no diplomats ... and much more .... now for the bad news .. we still have people who are not only drinking the koolade but want seconds.

Having went on that rant I see the problem as not so much a two party system as the stupidity of the people who elect the leadership.

The debates are concerned with flys as the elephants are stomping the crap out of us. Bernenake is writing out of the air 40 billion dollar checks a month to buy up acid morgages, and other stimuluses that cost the tax payers big bucks, ... we already own banks, 41% of GM and properties all over even as the states are going bankrupt. That same Fed has also said it will buy up the states debits. If that happens then the end has come the states would no longer be sovern.

As dumb as the voters are and as bad as the leaders are the worst is the media and college educators who should be telling the truth insteading of endorsing the koolade. Funny that when socialism comes they will both be out of a job and maybe jailed or shot.

Oct 5 2012:
A compromise deal would be to let citizens to override their representation vote in the elections when they want to exercise a direct vote for a policy. Both technology and politic science should be mature enough by now to accomodate people willing to take active part in politics, without going through the corporative, corruptible ladder of a political party.

We still base the need for a non direct democracy in the idea that the population will often make wrong decisions for particular issues... and this notion comes from an era in which the main source of information was the occasional newspaper. The current world is so different that that notion should be under review.

Oct 5 2012:
Of course, but my claim that it isn't sufficient anymore if we want to keep making progress as a civilization. Planes haven't made cars obsolete because there's plenty of places that are too local or too specific and you have to drive to them on your own. It's logical to delegate on representatives most of the time, what isn't logical is that citizens can't quite override their representatives once chosen. Their sovereignity is for all practical means suspended after the election. A system in which national democracy is exercised once every 1460 days is democratic only 0.07% of the time...

In the U.S., a voter doesn't grant their vote so the representative (politician) can only make the decisions the voter WANTS them to make. The representative is granted the right after being elected to make decisions FOR the voter...decisions needed to keep the country safe from foreign destruction, economically functional and basically solvant, and "running" on a day-to-day basis.

Polling the entire population to vote every time a decision needed to be made would not be efficient, nor even possible in many cases. The time factor alone required for some decision making (for instance...a "crisis" decision needing a relatively immediate response) would prevent it from working.

And in any case, politicians tell the people what the people want to hear during a campaign. They will promise to "do this" or "do that" if elected, knowing full well they won't be able to do it. But if that's the only way they can get the vote, that's what they have to tell the people. The LAST thing any educated politician would want, for the safety and security of the country, would be letting the citizens who voted for them make the decisions.

Oct 6 2012:
I agree with Rick Ryan, but I want to add that most politicians are not that highly educated (a law or politics degree won't help you when you have to decide on funding for NASA or the Navy or on economic policy) or very knowledgeable, but most citizens aren't either, so that's still not argument for direct democracy.

Oct 5 2012:
Its the voting process thats at fault, because it obligates a 2 party system to eventully happen
as with each election, people leave consistently losing parties infavor of the next available that is the next closest to their political positions, eventually leading to a 2 party system on opposing sides of the spectrum
(which both get paid to pass the exact same policies, making it a pseudo-2 party system like is seen in America).

Oct 5 2012:
If there are too many political parties, it becomes harder for political figures to take control of their citizens. So, distributed force can be somewhat beneficial to the citizens in many ways. But when a country gets chaotic, it also becomes much harder to bring peace to the country.
For efficiency, still, a two party political system is much more useful compared to a multiparty system.
As you know, there are lots of pros and cons in both a two party political system and a multiparty system. So, there’s no perfect system. We don't need to abolish it.
It all depends on each nation's situation. Even though honestly, it's true that we get sick and tired of political groups’ wrong purposes, all we have to do is just keep an eye on every political party to see if they are dare to reign over us with corrupt intention.
And finding out a way to keep a balance between utility and transparency is always at stake.

Oct 5 2012:
In a country like us (India), we have many political parties, 3 main to be on the national front. How so ever, we have a not fully functional and productive Parliament for a couple of years. Not sure if a country should have more than 2 political parties.

Nov 4 2012:
No, I feel that a two party system allows for the system of democracy to work in a way that a Republican might appeal to others while the democratic side appeals to the rest.
It is good to have a two party system because that's what has worked for years.

Oct 22 2012:
What if... there were no political parties at all? What if everyone ran a campaign based on the strength of their own ideas, rather than standing on the platform of their political party? Of course, there would have to be a way to limit campaign spending to level the playing field, but monitoring and enforcing that would be more than challenging.

Oct 19 2012:
Well, being turkish, I can even beg for the two party system right now...
For the last 10 years the "one" party getting elected and kicking us in all means...
I feel like living through the movie AGORA, (Life of Hypatia) :(

Oct 8 2012:
Leadership without a moral conscience....it's not that complicated. The Constitution was written to separate Church and State. By no means was it meant to separate Church and Man. A man who answers to a higher calling than himself, has power to resist corruption. A man who believes he is the center of the Universe is already corrupt.

My fellow Americans...if you do not like what's on the menu...change the menu. All the money went to banks so you could once again enslave yourself to debt. The would have worked in a free enterprise working system. With small and midsize business being nearly wiped out, there is no way to get the currency flowing. The Stock market may be doing well, but it's not American dollars being fed into it. It's other countries methodically gaining controlling interests in American businesses. I would say this is happening right before our eyes...but many are not even paying attention.

Oct 8 2012:
I think this is a very complex topic. Do I think that we should get rid of a two party system? No. Do i think we should alter the one that we have? Most certainly.

The beauty of a two-party system is that it works wonderfully for a large diverse country like the US. Since there are many different groups, this system forces people to unite in order to gain any political clout. The system helps prevent one side from gaining absurd amounts of power and discriminating against the others in the country. From what I learned in Government 2020, in a winner-take-all system (like the presidential election or the delegation of electoral votes) two dominant parties will eventually emerge. This is simply because if people do not unite in these parties, they won't be able to win any offices. I'll try to explain this in a example. Say there are 4 parties,( parties A,B,C, and D). If one can win office by simply having the most votes, this will lead to problems. Say party A wins the first election with 30% of the popular vote. The other groups would try to get more votes for the next election. They will either change and take members from other parties, or they will always lose. Eventually they end up becoming a hybrid of two different groups and have more followers. They then can compete with Party A. This process continues until there is only two main groups. So we can't really remove the two-party system because it will eventually form itself back in a winner-take-all system. It actually is a great system though because it forces a party to get a platform that represents the interests of a large group of people. (this is different than a parliamentary system; the US is too diverse for one of those)

That being said, should we change stuff in our system? Yeah. Take out a lot of the lobbying. Go back to the constitution's parameters for different issues. That being said, we should change parts of the system, not the whole system.

Oct 6 2012:
We should get rid of the 2 party system. It is no longer an accurate representation of what is happening in the physical world. Now Democracy still works, but this red vs blue, black vs white, left vs right, man vs machine, all it is doing is still trying to divide us a nation/world.

Oct 6 2012:
How would you restructure the voting system to detrmine a winner during the election then? If the election had 4 candidates, then a winner could be elected with only 26% of the popular vote. Is that a fair representation of what the majority of the populaion wanted? 74% of the voters DIDN'T want that candidate.

Oct 6 2012:
If you take that situation where a candidate wins with 26% of the vote and then remove two candidates during the next election, you're just gonna have a situation where half the people don't vote or half the people vote begrudgingly for the lesser of two evils. The candidate that wins with 51% of the votes would still only have the support of 26% of the people. In parliamentarian elections the problem you fear would be entirely irrelevant since 26% of the votes will just result in 26% of the seats.

Oct 6 2012:
There would just a larger primary and it would still get narrowed down to 2 and then the general public would vote based on popular vote making every vote count. The electoral college is out dated and barbaric in today's age as well as having delegates. Those are the things that need to change and have nothing to do with democracy.

Oct 6 2012:
That was my whole point of my question, Casey. We already DO that. If there are more than 2 candidates we hold primary elections. Eventually, the voters end up choosng between two candidates in the end. So what has really changed?

@ John Smith: Yes, maybe the candidate that eventually won with 51% of the vote would have only got 26% of the ORIGINAL vote when there were FOUR candidates. But when you hold the run-off election, there are only TWO candidates for THAT vote. If that's all the choices the voter's have left, then they can at LEAST make a choice for "which one they want" then. 51% in that case is representative of the TOTAL population of voters in that case. Or, like you said, they can just not come out to vote in the run-off. But then they shouldn't be complaining about who ended up getting elected in the "finals".

Taken to the extreme, what if every citizen in the country who was eligible to hold the office of President was placed on the ballot. If your name was on the ballot, who would you vote for? And if there needed to be a run-off election after that, and you weren't in the run-off on the ballot then, would you not vote in it because you thought the "best candidate" wasn't available anymore?

Oct 6 2012:
"If that's all the choices the voter's have left, then they can at LEAST make a choice for "which one they want" then."

That's barely an improvement and may very well be offset by more than 50% of the people not liking either candidate because the quality of candidates will degrade (when there are only two viable options, the least worst candidate can get away with stuff that not even 26% of the people supports, if the worse candidate also becomes worse the least worst candidate can get away with even more, etc...)

The best part of getting rid of the 2 party system is that we could have people like Ron Paul and Obama on the same ticket, both men who at least in the political world seem to be honest and willing to come to agreement about the best way to move forward. The problem is people are so stubborn and the system is so corrupt we just keep pushing through extremes from the right and then the left trying to "fix" what the other party "messed up. Instead of moving forward as a nation of free people, not free business.

Oct 8 2012:
What makes you think a nation of "free people" making all the decisions would result in the country "moving forward"? That's a very dangerous assumption to make.

Here's the real problem. People think that any ONE person in our U.S. government has enough power to "do it all". Not true. Even the President can't make a decision all by himself. He has to get majority approval of 100 Senators, 430 Congressional Representatives, and ultimately the Supreme Court if the decision is challenged as being unconstitutional.

So why do we even have a President? Human Nature. It's a status symbol that represents the "leader" of a nation-state. A President doesn't run a country anymore than a husband or wife has total control over running a marriage.

Heck, let's change the office of President so it has TWO people in it...one from each party. Nothing can be decided until BOTH of them agree on the decision. That would be interesting, don't you think? They would both have to eventually agree on SOMETHING, or NOTHING would ever get done. But wait...that's what really happens nowadays already, as long as the President, the Senate, and Congress aren't all majorities from the same party.

Or maybe that's not such a good idea either. It would be like trying to run a marriage. And since statistically almost 50% of marriages end up in divorce within the first 3 years...... ;-)

I always find it amusing that when, for instance, a Democratic President proposes a solution to something, then a Republican Senate or Congress eventually (after much posturing, of course) approves the action be taken, that none of the Republican citizens blame the Republicans in the Senate or House of "being wrong". Works both ways, too.

Maybe it's because compromise DOES exist within the two parties in the government when a decision HAS to ultimately be made to keep the country running? Something the average citizen can't comprehend is needed for any system to work...or is unwilling to accept?

Oct 8 2012:
I don't think the problem is democracy it is the only current government system that is suppose to provide change as well as having a check and balance system. We do compromise but instead of compromising for the good or advancement of "free" people we swing big and hope the most sh!t sticks to the wall. When the next party comes in to change the things that they wanted but didn't have enough votes to make it happen. The simple idea of of electing officials every 2/4 years to in essence create new laws that make criminals is ludicrousness. Politicians and lawyers and judges don't stop crime from happening they create crime. So they have a job. If we could live in a "minority report"(movie "no crime") our unemployment rate would be through the roof. However that being said we need to get rid of the 2 party system and create a unified group of individuals that will always act in the best interest of the whole. One such interest would be equality.

Oct 6 2012:
Each party does focus on promoting what they believe is best for the people. Liberals truly believe tax dollars disbursed by public servants is the best way to solve problems. Conservatives truly believe individual responsibility exercised in an atmosphere of minimal government control is the best way. There will always be at least two views.

Oct 6 2012:
"How To Survive a Two-Party Political System as an Average Citizen Without Going Crazy" (Based on the U.S Republican form of government)

1. Understand the campaign is nothing more than a popularity contest to try to get your vote. The more "dirt" you can sling at your opponant, the less popular he/she will become.

2. Understand that whoever you vote for, if they get elected, they can make ANY decision they want. They are not obligated to make only decisions YOU want them to anymore. That is the true meaning of being a "Representative" for you.

3. Understand that if the candidate you gave your vote to gets elected, you will probably like their decisions and be happy. If the opponant got elected, you are probably going to be mad as H*LL, hate their decisions, and be grumpy for the next four years (in the case of a President...SIX years if it was a Senator).

4. Go about your own business for the next 3 or 5 years. You don't get to make the decisions. That's what you elected the politicians to do for you. It will save you a lot of stress in the long run.

5. In years 4 and 6, get ready to repeat the popularity contest again. If you like the politician's decisions that was in office, vote for them (again if you did the last time). If you didn't like the decisions, vote for the other guy this time.

Oct 6 2012:
1. If you reveal to me factual evidence (what you call "dirt") that a candidate may not be what they are trying to make me think they are I will thank you for making me aware of it.2. Any person elected to public office is subject to Recall, or Impeachment at any time.3. Every citizen is a lobbyist. Actively support and encourage the elected officials who oppose the official you disagree with.4. Political apathy is a tragic reality, but not a necessary one. Action can always be taken to act as a Citizen Lobbyist.5.Write-in the name of the person you want, or vote for candidate who is not from either party.6. Volunteer and donate funds to get the people you want elected this time around. There is always hope to unseat someone since no one is elected for life.

Oct 6 2012:
You are correct, Edward. I shouldn't have used the word "dirt". Should have said something like "try to discredit the opponant" instead. That's what all campaigns do. They do it tactfully most of the time using the rules of debate, but when it is all over, if you believed both of them, then neither of them has any good ideas about anything.

As for the other items 2 through 6 in your reply, I totally agree with you there, too. The problem seems to be people prefer to just complain instead of take those actions. Complaining doesn't solve any problems. Actions do. That was what I was trying to get at in my post, and apparantly failed at doing so. When I made the comments in the #4 paragraph, it was intended to mean, "If the only thing you are going to do is complain, you may as well forget about that solving anything. Save your energy, save the stress." I'm all for people taking actions they have available to them. But most people won't DO that.

Oct 7 2012:
Maybe that's why Socialism is up and coming in America. It's a system that does not burden citizens with the need to inform themselves and actively participate in their own governance. All they have to do is whine about their lack of freedom. So sad. Thanks for a timely conversation Rick.

Oct 8 2012:
So Edward, you're saying all those fat ignorant, teabagging bigoted southern baptists and the faux news networks are hard core socialists? Because that's what I think of when I hear people talk about ignorance and whining, not the Europeans, Canadians and Asians who continuously beat Americans on test scores, are less anti-science, can actually point more than 3 countries out on a globe and are more tolerant.

1. Governments have more information about world events than the average citizen does. The debate about whether that information should all be made public is being hotly contested in another conversation at this time, so I won't go into that here. Suffice to say, it is a fact. Very little of a government's intelligence gathering is released to the general public.

2. Politicians (for the most part...the ones who need to be making the decisions at least) have access to that information. They will spend the majority of their time reviewing it, being briefed on it, and then deciding what to do about it. That's their "day job", and what they were elected to do when needed. The average citizen working their "day job" does not have time to get anywhere near involved in assessing the information needed to make a rational decision about "what to do" about it.

3. Most politicians have been educated to a much higher level in disciplines such as Political Science, Economics, Decision Theory, and the things they need to understand to make the decisions required for a planet consisting of 7 Billion occupants. They also have highly educated advisors, such as military leaders (Joint Chief's of Staff) to advise them in areas they may be lacking. Not ALL politicians have these resources, including the education levels...your local community Mayor...but then he/she isn't really making World Changing decisions at that level. Most average citizens have not been educated to the level of national leaders at all.

4. Most average citizens make emotion-based decisions. World Leadership requires a much different type of decision-making. Game Theory, Risk Management, and understanding Human Nature and how that will affect the outcome of the decision.

For those reasons, when faced with "world level problems", a politician at that decision-making level would ignore what most average citizens wanted them to do, and do what was needed to be done.

Oct 6 2012:
Well we can leave the other discussion there ill agree on that.
Aw man, John you should go work for these guys they would love you. These national leaders have come to completely psychotic conclusions in many cases. You sound identical to Reinhold Niebuhr.

"Rationality belongs to the cool observers and because of the stupidity of the average man he follows not reason, but faith and naive faith of the proletarian requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications, which have to be provided by myth makers to keep ordinary persons on the right course". What a disgusting sentiment, which still persists today.

These educated leaders lied the people into war in Vietnam, these educated advisors signed off on Operation Northwoods(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods), these presidents have destroyed civil liberties under the patriot act, these governments, who think they know whats best for you, have been responsible for a disgraceful amount of violence, from the massacre and systematic destruction of the native americans up to Iraq. How many good soldiers have to die for rich bigwigs in washington?

Understanding human nature? What are you talking about? I dont think these people know a thing about themselves, they obviously can't see themselves, which in turn makes it impossible to understand anyone else.

YES: But only if you can GUARANTEE the replacement system you are proposing will solve the problems that are "wrong" with the current system, without introducing NEW problems that would be just as bad, or maybe even worse, than the current system.

NO: If you can't do the requirements of the above "yes" answer.

Change to any "system" without an increase in functional positive results should not be made just for the sake of change. It's a waste of time and effort.

Oct 5 2012:
"Should countries abolish the two party political system?"

You can't really abolish it, what you can do is have a popular vote instead of winner-takes-all-per-single-mp-region, that way at least parliamentary elections won't be a two-party affair. However with an elected head of state there is always the danger of a two-party system popping up (because there can only be 1 head of state).

TED Conversations Archives

We’ve spent three years sharing Ideas, Debates and Questions — and learned a lot.

Now we’re going on hiatus to retool and rebuild from the inside out for a better conversation experience.